Polverigi

Of the castle that stands at the origin of the village there remains a vaulted entrance arch, which once had its portcullis and drawbridge: walls, towers and battlements have become houses, lived in, and the ring of the old centre is still called the Roccolo because of its rounded shape. Building had begun after the year one thousand, when the Avellanite monks left the old parish of San Damiano and moved up here, founding the church of Sant'Antonino; from that building site a brick survives with the date 1141 cut into it. In 1202, inside those newly finished walls, Ancona, Osimo and Fermo signed the pact by which they undertook not to make war on one another. A village that counted for little at that point was chosen precisely because it belonged to none of the three.

The name comes from the soil: Pulverisium, from pulver, because the ground the village is built on is made mostly of sand and dust. The peace of 1202 did not extend to the centuries that followed: in 1323, in the fighting between Guelphs and Ghibellines, an adventurer they called «Lo Schiavo» massacred the inhabitants and carried off everything, and from then on Polverigi placed itself under the protection of Ancona, becoming one of its twenty castles — which earned it, in 1517, a sacking by Ludovico of Fermo during the war of the duchy of Urbino. Then there is a story that closes the circle. Under the German occupation, the peasant family of the Pigliapoco hid the four Morpurgo, Milanese Jews whom they knew well: the Pigliapoco were their sharecroppers, that is, they worked the Morpurgo land. The peasants saved their landlords, and on 27 June 1995 Yad Vashem recognised Attilio and Lidia Pigliapoco as Righteous Among the Nations. Today the village is known for one further reason: in the first days of July it hosts Inteatro, an international festival of contemporary theatre and dance.